Stats Tracking/ideas

The USER_AGENT statistics project is getting itself well underway, with lots of ideas and snippets of code (and complete scripts) being contributed by the team members to get us all going.

I have sent an email to Chris Messina to ask for a subdomain and database for the project to sit on and use, and with luck that will come into play sometime next week.

I've put this page on so we can discuss ideas for directions the stats project can go.

For example:

If the subdomain is placed and used, perhaps combining the serverspace for the mambo spreadfirefox project might be a nice idea. This would give us not only another CMS to use for the project, but would also possibly help the Mambo Spread Firefox team work through their project.

How often and where on the website should the actual tracking script be placed? To reduce server load, I personally think it should be placed on the index page and the major entry pages of the site.

Any other ideas you might have.

Please feel free to put your contributions onto this page. Its a good way to do some brainstorming. --awrowe 09:25, 2 Apr 2005 (EST)

I've been trying to think of some catchy name for this project... Since we're tracking the spread of Firefox, the phrase "Ignite the Web" kept leaping to my mind, conjuring up images of a wildfire spreading... So, does anybody know of a name for a person who studies the spread of wildfires? The only thing that I could come up with is arsonologist, but arson is a very negative sounding word. Does anyone have any other ideas?
Ghedipunk 11:30, 2 Apr 2005 (EST)

How 'bout: "Watch the flames spread" or "The fire is burning" or "The fox is running" (I don't like that one, but a foxhunting analogy would be cool) or "The coals are alight - now watch them burn". A last one which might be cool is "Foxbrush". The reference to the foxtail is obvious, but another name for bushfires in Australia is brushfires.

The name of someone who loves fire is either "pyromaniac" or someone who seeks it out could be called a pyrophiliac.--awrowe 12:06, 2 Apr 2005 (EST)

Hmmm... How about just nicknaming the project "Foxhunt." It's short, simple, and it describes how we're hunting through the wild servers of the Internet looking for traces of Firefox. ;-) --Ghedipunk 12:13, 2 Apr 2005 (EST)

Foxhunt is good, I like that. Also, perhaps we could come up with a foxystats button for any adult sites participating? Some sort of cartoonish lady fox in the style of Who framed Roger Rabbit's femme fatale. hah.--awrowe 07:21, 3 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Guys, could everyone helping with this project send me an email to inksmithy at gmail dot com please? I'm setting up a mailing list for this project. Also, while I have been quiet here on the wiki, I have been pushing to find us some hosting. I hope to have some good news on that front soon, but it will all be in the emails.--awrowe 11:44, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Well, it is always easy to start up a project, but it is another thing entirely to finish one up. It looks like it has been a few days since anyone has worked actively on these Wiki pages, whether it be fixing typos, putting forth new ideas, or submitting new code. I'm sure that we would all agree that this is a wonderful idea, and one that deserves to be persued, but I think that everyone else is waiting for someone else to do something, or at least tell them what to do next. Also, even though everyone has their own ideas of how the scripts would run, I think that the ideas are a bit different from person to person, which means that nobody can work together on their own functions without making every function at the same time themselves.

So, I'm going to work over the next few days to get my ideas down on the screen as thoroughly as possible... Fortunately, I don't have that large of an ego, so you will all be welcomed to nit-pick at it, as I'm certain that I will have made several mistakes. Since I have both school and work to contend with as well, please be patient as I make my presentation.

Also, I'd like to see some more activity on the mailing list mentioned above... I'm not sure if there has been any traffic in April or not, since the latest thread that is archived is in March, so any clarification would be helpful. The mailing list will be an excelent way to communicate without people feeling as though they are "cluttering" up these Wiki pages.
Ghedipunk 16:12, 12 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Oh there's been action. I killed a Nigerian 419 today. However, I'm not stopping any legitimate action, nor am I stopping you from enacting some mailing list action. Get to writing! :) --Tomtalk/Bliki 16:30, 12 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Agreed. I wouldn't say the project has gone dormant, but there has been a big slowdown in ideas and improvements being made. I think what needs to happen now is quite simply get the script into play as soon as possible. If we need to adjust it afterwards, we can, but lets just get it going. I'll hassle Chris about the subdomain again today and try to get an answer from him. --awrowe 04:31, 13 Apr 2005 (EDT)

I think that I have all of my charts and such ready... It is now just a matter of compressing the PNG files even more (the images can get away with only two colors), and zipping up the originals for distribution. (I used MS Visio, so if anyone has that, they can use my copies for their edits... or hopefully point me towards an open source editor that can handle Visio files. ;-) ) Of course, these drawings will be GNU licensed under their document licensing format (if anyone has a copy of that license agreement, or can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it). I just figured that spending some time drawing pretty pictures would save me a few thousand words in describing my grand vision for this project. Ghedipunk 18:35, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)